Practical Advice For Operationalizing IT Surveys
If you have successfully deployed an ITSM solution like Nexthink, you’ll next want to collect timely employee survey data to provide context for your support team.
From our experience we recommend you take the following steps:
Get buy-in from corporate communications
In most large-scale companies, internal communication is usually already owned by the corporate communications department. If you deploy an IT survey tool without their approval, the appearance of your new messages may lead to internal friction or worse – and we don’t want that happening for you.
Corporate communications departments usually vet all messages broadcast to employees. But IT departments can fall into a weird grey area—though most of their messages are technical in nature, they are often destined directly for employees.
Our customers, for example, often use Nexthink Engage to notify users about issues with their devices—something that their corporate communications teams perceive as purely technical messages and typically approve. However, IT satisfaction surveys can be categorized as part of their overall improvement programs so they can view separate IT messages as misleading or even as a threat to their work.
Present your IT employee survey tool first to corporate communications
Let’s face it: it’s never nice to have the impression that someone is taking your job. But that’s what corporate communications can feel like when they first receive your IT survey message out of the blue. This small misunderstanding can snowball into a bureaucratic nightmare—your IT project could easily be derailed without sign off first from corporate.
To prevent that from happening, you should make sure that your communications department is aware of what is going on. Meet with the right people, present them with your IT solution and explain how it doesn’t take away from their messaging but enhances it.
Send campaigns to corporate communications before releasing them to the whole company
To reinforce the fact that your IT survey tool is not competing with regular corporate communication, share with them an example of what your campaign will look before sending it to the whole company. This can make your corporate communications office feel included and like a partner rather than an opponent. Let them see the campaigns and suggest changes in their wording or branding to ensure they are consistent with the rest of their communication policy.
This is a small step that can pay huge dividends for your digital transformation project.
Suggest corporate communications use your IT employee survey tool to enhance their own communications initiatives
IT tools can be used just like any other medium. But unlike email or IM, the best IT tools offer a privileged channel that ensures your messages get through. Sell the benefits of your survey tool and pitch the accessibility and precision you can get using it instead of traditional email. If your tool will make life easier for the communications department, they won’t be able to ignore you!
In our most successful deployments, corporate communications actively participated in the creation of these survey campaigns and requested their own messages be sent using Engage–thus improving their communication with end users, and weaving new bonds between IT and communication departments.
Let your end users know why and how you will reach out to them
The second crucial step recommended is talking directly with your end users before deploying any IT survey campaigns. IT communications tools survey technology present companies with a unique and privileged channel. However, this has a flip side: if an end user first receives a message from IT without any prior notice, they might question its validity. Employees today are savvy digital users, and may suspect the worst that strange messages are deliberate phishing attacks!
To prevent this type of confusion from happening, a good step is to communicate with your end users about the new IT tool you are ready to deploy. Tell them what the messages will look like, and how they can verify they are legitimate and not actual spam.
A smooth start
We hope this advice will help you deploy your next IT survey tool without the unnecessary stress of internal blockages and bureaucracy.
If you’re interested in learning how to leverage a powerful IT communications and survey solution, read about the Nexthink Engage module today!
Related posts:
- How Our Customers Get 80% Response Rates From Employee Surveys
- 7 Remote Work Problems IT Solved With Nexthink
- 4 Steps for Investing in Telecoms Solutions & Employee Experience
- 4 Tips for a Productive Digital Workplace
